Interphase

"These people are going on a long journey, Doctor, and they'll be needing a physician. I think you may be willing to help them, once you've heard their story. Do you know a woman called Alice Hanscom?"

Edek sat up, swinging his long legs over the edge of the cot as he did so. His head didn't protest, and neither did his stomach. Good; whatever means they' d used to render him unconscious hadn't done him harm. He answered, "Of course. She was Mater, our crèche parent, when Merry and I were growing up together. Later she was Mistress to all of Warrior Creche, after our group was grown and gone."

"Merry would be Captain Canso. Your partner. Yes." The woman stepped closer as he got to his feet. "Take a good look at me, Dr. Fallon. Who do you see, really?"

It was eerie. Like looking into the face of a ghost, except that-presumably-ghosts were supposed to stay the same age forever. The age at which they'd died. Weren't they? If one believed in such nonsense, which Edek didn't. He was a doctor, a trained scientist; and he was his Shaman father's son, who knew that the spirits of the dead didn't linger in this transient reality.

"I see Mater, but not as old as she was when I knew her. And Mater's dead. Has been for the last couple of years."

"Very good. We use the initials, usually, of the person from whose DNA we were made. So instead of Alice Hanscom, I'm Ardis Hall. How do you do?"

* * *

Roderick Canso pointed his fighter's nose directly at the asteroid's naturally hollow heart. He pushed his engines to maximum as he calculated his course, and then he chuckled at the gasps that came over his commlink.

One voice didn't gasp, though. That voice said, "Lieutenant Canso! Either cut your speed by half, or alter your course! Now!"

"Too late," Rod answered, grinning into his solitary cockpit and reflecting that he'd only spoken the truth. Then the Stone Ring surrounded him.

It really did look like a ring, when viewed from sufficient distance. Close up, though, it looked more like a tunnel boring its way through a mountain. A mountain that was perpetually on the move, tumbling through space as part of a vast debris field. Big rocks, tiny rocks, and dust-motes, captured by the gravity well of a star that was the last one out before the galactic Arm ended in open space.

Rod's group leader was right, of course. Only a daredevil would head into the Stone Ring's heart at full throttle. But the whole idea of holding practice maneuvers in this forsaken place was to test one's piloting skills to their limits, wasn't it? And since Group Leader had seen fit to split his people into teams, and since the hottest pilot on the opposing team had been on Rod's tail just before he started his run toward the Stone Ring...well, Ms. Smart-Ass wasn't behind him now. She'd broken off as soon as she could see where he was headed, and she wouldn't be waiting for him on the Stone Ring's other side because his comrades would get there first. Group Leader was standing off to observe the exercise, and Lieutenant Canso's team knew who was boss for the time being. Which meant they were going to take care of him.

What a rush! I wonder if I'm the first pilot to go through this thing at more than a centenarian's crawl? Canso had time enough for that thought, and then he was on the Stone Ring's other side.